Halina doesn’t get what they mean. They both pause to let a group move into the room. “As in?”
“Well,” Ari says, moving forward, “before a date, don’t you need to, you know…?”
Halina raises her eyebrows to make them go on.
“Apologize and tell her you were wrong?”
Halina groans, drops her head, and lets herself be pulled along. She does need to grovel at Alexandra’s feet, doesn’t she?
* * *
Given her state of mind, perhaps she shouldn’t have gone to a club only three days after the debacle. Then again, Alexandra is not in the mood to be sensible; she wants to drink, she wants to dance, she wants to feel desired again. She doesn’t want to take someone home, not so soon after the—well, it was a break-up even if there was no relationship to break.
Merde.
All Alexandra wants tonight is to soothe her ego. To achieve that, she needs her armor. Leo used to call her little black dress her “fuck me” dress, usually before pulling it off her body. The dress doesn’t match anything else in Alexandra’s wardrobe, but it will certainly get her some much-needed attention.
The dress has not been exposed to the light of day in a couple of years, but it still fits. It hugs Alexandra’s every curve, and, if she may say so herself, she looks so good in it, she’s pretty sure it will live up to its name tonight.
Plus, it has pockets.
Alexandra has barely stepped into the bar when a glass is pushed in front of her. “I didn’t order anything,” she tells the barmaid in French. She hopes her accent is covered by the loud bass, which pulses black and purple at the forefront of her mind.
“You don’t need to, sweetheart,” the barmaid replies with a wink; her chin is subtly angled to her right to point Alexandra in the direction of her generous patron.
Alexandra looks at the stranger, considers her, before taking the glass in hand to hold in a silent toast. As the tall woman crosses the crowd, Alexandra smirks around the rim of her glass and pats her dress.
Worked like a charm.
The woman, Lucie, doesn’t have the most sparkling conversation, but neither does the man Alexandra dances with next. Conversation is not what Alexandra is after, though, and she lets them flirt and ogle her. She dances with them, and more drinks come her way, and, as the night progresses, Alexandra’s anger and self-pity recede.
“Should we go back to my place?” Lucie whispers in Alexandra’s ear, and she can only shake her head in response. “Seriously?”
Alexandra faces her with an apologetic smile. “It was really nice,” she replies, only slightly slurring. “But I wasn’t looking for anything else tonight.”
Lucie frowns at her. Then she shrugs. “You little tease,” she says without bite. “Maybe some other time?” she adds as she shakes her red hair.
Alexandra can’t deny she’s a beautiful woman, and it would be oh-so easy to just follow that attraction. But as Halina so generously pointed out, casual sex is not for Alexandra. And she’s not ready to try a rebound; just as with her inspiration, she won’t force it.
With a noncommittal smile, Alexandra returns to the bar. If she can’t drown her sorrow in music and dancing and flirtation, alcohol will have to do the trick.
Ch 7
E Minor
Violine, Baby Blue, and Bordeaux
The next morning, Alexandra cannot give her all to the task at hand, but the fact she’s showing up at work at all is a cause for celebration. And if Leo notices anything amiss, either he is sensitive enough not to mention it, or he has grown a sense of self-preservation since their last big fight.
The panels come along nicely, and Alexandra spares a moment to curse Halina to the ninth circle of Hell for taking away some of the passion she’d had for the project. She’d started the gig with loads of enthusiasm, already reluctant to part with whatever pieces might emerge. Now, honestly, she can’t wait to be finished with it, finished in particular with the main panel inspired by the colors Halina created in her mind, finished with this place where her music inhabits every curve and every room.
“Hey, boss, easy on the blue,” Leo says, calling her back from her thoughts, “we don’t have much to spare.”
Alexandra frowns at him before dropping her gaze to the glass in her hands. She scraped the glass just on the wrong side of too rough; fractures have appeared at its edges and will need to be polished away, leaving this piece of glass the wrong size for its intended purpose. This will cost them precious material.
Damn it.
“Sorry,” she mumbles as she hides her face by looking into her satchel to find some fine-grain sandpaper. “Got lost in thought.”
Leo pauses in his welding, lifts his goggles to his forehead, and tilts his head. “Wanna talk about it?” he asks gently. He clenches his jaw. “It’s the ivory-tickler, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t have to phrase it as a question; Alexandra might have gushed once or twice about Halina and her many fine qualities while they worked on the panels.
Alexandra nods sadly and sniffs. She returns her attention to the deep-blue panel.
Leo turns off the torch, goes to her, and puts his gloved hands around her shoulders. “If she let you go, she’s an idiot.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“I know she is,” Leo insists, making her turn to face him. “I was in her idiotic shoes once, remember?”
Alexandra winces and pulls him into an embrace. “You are, were, not an idiot. We both decided to end it, remember?” She mumbles into his chest and circles his waist with one arm. “It was the best way to keep our friendship intact.”
Leo hums and squeezes her shoulder. “It’s still her loss,” he says softly as he pulls away. “You’ll be okay, cara mia?”
“I’ll be okay when we’re done with this and away from this place.” She pauses to take a deep breath. “Let’s weld the whole thing together, install it, get our check, and move on.”
Leo smiles at her and ruffles her curls. “You do realize this will take us at least a couple of months to finish, right?”
“I’m sure we can make it a month and a half.”
“All right!” Leo exclaims while he struts back to his station. “Let’s do this!”
Alexandra returns to the blue glass. She appreciates his enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is precisely what she needs to put all the ugliness behind her.
Later, she leaves the foyer to fetch a thinner piece of lead from the truck. She’s resolved to finish the more intricate details of her pattern so it can be handed over to Leo, and there is a new spring in her step, a new sense of urgency. Her renewed speed is the only reason she catches any of the conversation when she returns to the foyer.
“…to put her back together, so just leave, okay? She’ll be better off without you, and I’ll take care of her. I know how—I have plenty of experience.”
Leo’s voice is filled with venom and anger, sparks of red sprayed over his usual copper. Alexandra can almost picture his posture: chest puffed and arms crossed over it to make him look bigger and more impressive.
“What happens between Alexandra and me doesn’t concern you, Mister Neri, no matter what you want to convince yourself and her of. As much as you wish for me to disappear, no, I won’t just leave, if it’s all the same to you.”
Alexandra did not expect Halina’s peach color to appear; not so soon, and not in a confrontation with Leo. Halina had been clear about her lack of interest in any sort of relationship.
“Get out of here before she comes back. You hurt her enough as it is,” Leo insists.
Alexandra is torn between the instinct to protect Halina and gratitude to Leo for defending her. A more deeply ingrained part of her rejects the need for a white knight.
“I’ll leave if Alexandra tells me to leave,” Halina replies, her petulance sprayed in purple dots over
her usual peach. “You can just go back to… flexing your arms or something.”
Leo lets out a familiar huff, usually a herald of one of his volcanic explosions when he can be cruel with his words alone. She should stop the confrontation before it can escalate.
The lead she brought back suddenly weighs a ton, and she deposits it on the worktable. She gathers inner strength and puts her hands in her pockets as she clears her throat to get Halina and Leo’s attention. “What’s going on here?”
Halina has her hands on her hips, and her cheeks are still flushed with the heat of the confrontation. She relaxes her stance. “Alexandra,” she says softly, turning her back to Leo. Alexandra had tried to convince herself Halina wasn’t as beautiful as she remembered. But to see her in the flesh confirms that she is even more stunning.
Have some self-respect, damn it.
Halina’s leather pants, which showcase her legs, are not helping her focus on her anger.
“What do you want?” Alexandra says to Halina while she nods toward Leo.
Behind Halina’s back, he clenches his jaw before nodding back, and tugs at the corner of his eye to show his mistrust.
Halina gets closer. Alexandra takes one deliberate step back and pushes her hands deeper into her pockets. “I wanted to ask you if we could…” Halina says, and her voice has a quiver of baby pink around the edges. That shade has never appeared before. “…If we could talk? Just for a minute.” The apples of her cheeks redden. “In private.”
Leo flips off Halina, and Alexandra does agree with the sentiment. As far as she is concerned, Halina can go fuck herself into the next millennium if she believes she deserves a minute of Alexandra’s time. That’s what Alexandra wants to believe, anyway. On the other hand, Alexandra’s heart screams at her to give Halina a chance, to hear what she has to say, because some good might come of it.
“Leo, I think I left the keys in the car. Do you mind checking it for me?” Alexandra asks, her eyes on Halina.
Leo opens and closes his mouth with a snap; the muscle in his jaw jumps under his stubble. He drops his gloves and his blowtorch on his worktable with a stormy expression and leaves the room.
“What do you want?” she repeats once Leo turns the corner.
Super-confident Halina was hot as hell, of course, but unsure, almost shy Halina? Alexandra wants to date this woman, unwrap all her layers and revel in her complexity, but not yet.
“I want to apologize for the way things ended between us. I never meant to hurt you and I—” She bites her lower lip before looking straight into Alexandra’s eyes. “I miss you.”
Alexandra exhales slowly to control the crazy rhythm of her heart. “I missed you, too,” she mumbles, breaking eye contact to look at her feet. She scuffs the floor with the toe of her shoe.
A tender sound comes from Halina, the soft yellow of leather against wool. When Alexandra looks up, Halina is smiling at her from much closer. “You did?”
“Of course I did,” Alexandra replies begrudgingly. “I meant every word I said to you: This was more than sex for me.”
Her hands in her pockets, Halina props herself against Leo’s worktable. In her oversized knitted sweater, she looks ten years younger; another layer of vulnerability tugs at Alexandra’s protective instincts. “I’m sure you meant it,” she says softly. “And I wish I could have your faith in, in us. The thing you have to understand is…” She pauses to exhale slowly. “…I've never dated anybody and I’m scared shitless.”
Alexandra’s dismay must be etched on her face. “Never? Not even when you were a teenager?”
A sad smile appears on Halina’s face. “When you were a teenager, going to high school and normal parties and going on dates, I trained and practiced and toured all around Europe, on my way to my first award.”
“Oh.” Alexandra tries to picture it: no childhood; no time to discover who she was, what she liked, whom she loved; a childhood and an adolescence spent honing a talent. No hobbies aside music? No friends? No love? A shiver goes down her back. “And later?”
“I didn’t care for it,” Halina says, crossing her arms over her chest. “There wasn’t any point in any relationship I would leave behind a week or so later.” Halina looks back at Alexandra and shrugs. “It made more sense to keep it purely physical, if you see what I mean? Besides, relationships, and the whole mess that goes with them, never seemed to be worth my time.”
Alexandra has a deep-rooted certainty Halina is not telling her all the reasons she abstained from dating for most of her adult life. It’s a subject for a later conversation, though.
“What about now?” she asks as she adopts a more relaxed stance.
A blush appears on Halina’s ears and cheeks. “Now I’m going to stay in town for at least a whole season and I—” She pauses, a dejected expression on her face. “I missed you. I want to see what could be between us.”
“You wanna date me?” Alexandra asks, more to make sure she’s not imagining things than to make Halina spell it out.
“I care about you,” Halina says in one breath, as if ashamed of it. “If dating is what it takes to, um, be with you, I want to give it a try.”
“It?”
Halina rolls her eyes, but her lips are still drawn in a smile. “Us, okay? I want to give us a chance.” She pauses, audibly gulping. “If you want to give me one, of course.”
Alexandra considers it.
She does want to give them another try, a proper chance at properly dating. It could be fun to woo Halina even though they already know each other in the biblical sense, to show her Alexandra’s Paris and take her on delightful dates. But she’s not sure she will recover so easily from the blow if Halina hurts her again. Hell, it took her two months to be able to look at Leo and at her work without a tissue in hand, and that was an amicable breakup.
Hope and worry battle in Halina’s blue eyes, as if she expects Alexandra to dismiss her entirely but still wishes for the best. That visible conflict, so similar to what she feels herself, is what Alexandra needs to make her decision.
“All right.” Alexandra puts her hands in her back pockets as she walks toward Halina. “One rule, though.”
“Whatever you say.” A dimple appears in Halina’s left cheek.
“No more sex until we really know each other.”
A frown makes a brief appearance between Halina’s brows. “What does sex have to do with us dating?” She quirks her lips into a crooked smirk. “I thought the benefit of a relationship would be guaranteed sex, not less of it.”
Alexandra fights against an answering grin. “We rushed into sex and we forgot to talk, and look where it almost led us. I think we need to learn who we are, what we want, before we let sex, as fun as it was, take over our brains.” She pauses. Halina makes a begrudgingly agreeing sound. Encouraged, Alexandra continues. “If we want to build something based on more than physicality, sex needs to be taken out of the equation until it is a component of our relationship, not the alpha and the omega of it.”
Halina squints at her and then sighs loudly. “Fine, whatever you say.”
Alexandra takes Halina’s hand and lets herself be pulled in. “So,” she says, her hands splayed on Halina’s collarbone, above her breasts, “does this mean I can take you on a date?”
Under her fingertips, Halina’s sharp intake of breath is all the answer Alexandra needs. “I suppose it does.”
“Awesome.” Alexandra takes a deliberate step back and lightly brushes the swell of Halina’s breasts. “Tomorrow night, I’ll pick you up at your hotel around seven.”
“Tomorrow night,” Halina repeats. “Can I get a kiss?”
Alexandra’s cheeks turn feverish and she can’t resist acting coy. “A k—yeah, sure, you can,” she replies, wiggling her fingers at Halina in a come-hither gesture.
Halina wraps one arm around Alexandra’s wa
ist to pull her flush against her and she cups Alexandra’s chin to lift it toward her. “Looking forward to knowing you better,” she whispers with a devilish smile before pressing her lips against Alexandra’s.
Alexandra may have had some remorse about not playing a hundred percent fair, but it dissipates in the light of Halina’s own unfairness. The kiss is dirty, sexual, hot, and radically different from any kiss they shared in the past. As passionate as they were, those kisses did not convey the tenderness, the carefulness, with which Halina passes her lips over Alexandra’s now. Alexandra’s toes curl in her shoes, and she returns the kiss wholeheartedly. Her fingers find the few tendrils escaping Halina’s braid.
“Till the morrow.” Halina pulls away with a wink and walks out, looking over her shoulder one more time before she disappears into the hallway.
Alexandra cups her own chin and observes Halina rolling her hips on her way out.
Bring it on.
* * *
Halina thought that getting over Alexandra was complicated and frustrating, but it’s nothing compared to what she has to face now. Her nerves turn a dinner at a restaurant into an examination, with Alexandra’s eyes on her to catch her when she fails. Whether she’s imagining this or not, the result is the same: Halina fidgets under Alexandra’s observant gaze as if sitting on a chair made of red-hot coals.
Halina reaches for the little tendrils of hair on her nape. Playing with them gives her something to focus on. The menu is a blur and when Halina does manage to read the names of the dishes, they make little sense.
She looks up, and flushes when her eyes once again meet Alexandra’s gray ones. Whoever said gray is a cold color never saw this shade: so rich, so deep, so full of passion. Mesmerizing.
Halina clears her throat, as it won’t do her any good to let her mind wander to how passionate Alexandra has proven to be.
“Until we get to know each other,” ja pierdolę, that could be a while.
“You don’t want to eat?” she asks.
Alexandra blinks and sits up straighter. “Beg your pardon?”
The button of Alexandra’s shirt is about ready to pop, and Halina focuses on not staring at it. She shifts her gaze slightly, to the light reflected by Alexandra’s choker necklace, and smiles. “You didn’t read the menu. The logical conclusion for me is to assume you don’t intend to order anything to eat, which would be a shame.”
Concerto in Chroma Major Page 7
